Saturday, July 30, 2011

I was curious after yesterday's post to see what relics I could find for sale. Found this great post:

"In 1995, the Archangel Gabriel descended from heaven and announced that a lasting peace was coming to Northern Ireland. He appeared at a number of sites, including the slopes of Sliabh Sneachta here in Co. Donegal. I was a witness to this apparition.
The weather was inclement and as the Archangel ascended again into heaven, many feathers were blown from his wings. The other people present and I collected as many of these feathers as we could find and I have over 100 of these feathers at home.
These feathers have brought me nothing but good fortune since I took them home all those years ago. I have found true love and fathered a child with my soul-mate, become a success in my chosen field and been able to start a foundation to help starving orphans in Co. Offaly.
2 nights ago, the Archangel came to me in a dream and told me I must travel all over this island to spread his message of brotherly love. He told me I must buy a new car and to do this, I must sell some of his feathers to other believers so that they too can receive his blessing upon their lives.

These are genuine feathers from the wings of the Archangel Gabriel and will bring you success and goodwill just as these blessings were brought to me.

You may PM me for payment and shipping details.

Do not miss out on this incredible oppurtunity to own a genuine angel feather.

Friday, July 29, 2011

In the cool living room of a stone-built house in Northern Israel I might just have held in my hands the keys to the ancient mysteries of Christianity.

And then again, I might not have.

With the blinds shuttered against the glare of the midday sun my host, Hassan Saeda, lays out a collection of extraordinary books which he says are about 2,000 years old.
Flowing of hair and neat of beard, he bears a distracting resemblance to an illustration of Christ from an old children's Bible. It lends the scene an air of extra gravity.

The books - bindings, pages, covers and all - are made entirely of various metals.

They are inscribed - or engraved, stamped or embossed - with various simple pictures and writing in a variety of languages including Greek and Old Hebrew.
And they are astonishingly heavy. Some are no larger than a credit card but some are the size of large-format modern paperbacks. The largest that I handled probably weighed 4 or 5kg (about 10lbs).
You can see why the publishing industry was eventually won over by the flexibility and portability of paper.Family heirloom?
But that is where the supply of undisputable concrete fact about the collection - which some people refer to as the "Lead Codices" - more or less runs out.
Mr Saeda, for example, says the books have been in his family for 120 years, after his grandfather discovered them in a cave.
Other people who have met him to discuss the books say he found or bought them in Jordan within the last five years and smuggled them into Israel.
Mr Saeda is sticking to the current version of his story in which he acknowledges that many experts who have seen the metal volumes consider them to be fakes.

His faith is undimmed.
"I spent so much time and so much money to prove these are real. There are a lot of professors and one of them told me that I'm living in a fantasy.
My answer to him was: 'I think you got old and your eyes don't see anything.' I took my book and went away. Many professors say it's a fake. Why? I don't know why. But this is a real book."
Mysticism and magic swirl in the dark air as Mr Saeda enlarges on the possibilities he sees in the codices.
They might contain the real story of the destruction of the Jewish Second Temple by the Romans, he says.
Or they could fill the gaps in our knowledge of the early Christian movement. They might even hold the key to universal happiness.
If they are real, that is. The 'True Cross'
The Holy Land is one of the homes of archaeology. Indeed for years, one of the main purposes of the science was to search for tangible evidence that would prove the truth of the stories of the Bible.

And there has always been money in it too.
There are enough pieces of the "True Cross" in circulation to make a wooden aircraft carrier. And enough nails to put it together.
British taxpayers will wince at the thought that a king of England once paid 100,000 gold coins for the "real" crown of thorns from the New Testament.
There are stories of not one but several foreskins of Jesus which have been recovered, sold and venerated and of the feathers of the wings of the Archangel Michael being preserved in Pennsylvania.
For every seller, it seems there is a buyer.

So I went to see Lenny Wolfe, an antiquarian who lives and trades in Jerusalem and who painted a gripping picture of a Middle East antiques market where the unwary and the inexpert tread at their peril.

Factories in Syria knock out fake antiquities to order and every month brings new stories of caves in the remote valleys of Jordan where golden treasures are hidden that will change the way we see the world.
Mr Wolfe has seen the lead codices and decided not to invest. He is a philosopher as well as a trader, interested in the foibles which inspire people to seek out antiquities which may well be fake and to pin their hopes on them.
Or, as he put it: "The greater, the more sensational the story, the more the chances of it being real are miniscule. I'm very interested in the behavioural or anthropological aspects of the antiquities trade."
Mr Wolfe is writing a book, entitled Forgeries and Controversies in Biblical Archaeology. "There are enough controversies and forgeries to make this a lengthy tome," he says.Golden rule
Joe Zias, an anthropologist who served for 25 years as a senior curator at the Israel Antiquities Authority, is equally sceptical.
The golden rule in archaeology, he says, is simple - when you hear extraordinary claims, ask for extraordinary proof.
Mr Zias says the world of archaeology has changed since Hollywood gave us first Indiana Jones and then the Da Vinci code.

No longer is the archaeologist a nerdy toff with a shovel and a Shorter Oxford Dictionary of Latin. Suddenly he or she, is a swashbuckling figure solving the sinister mysteries of antiquity.
They are still searching for the Holy Grail of course - except that now the Holy Grail is not just the find itself but a story of danger and adventure in the process of searching that secures you a deal for a book or a documentary.
Joe Zias says the odds are always against any such finding turning out to change the way we look at ancient history as the Dead Sea Scrolls once did.
He says he has seen many people bringing artefacts to his museum during his quarter-century as a curator, but the only genuine one was a fragment of Byzantine pottery found by a tourist on Mount Sinai.
"It wasn't going back to the time of Moses, but in 25 years that's the only thing I ever saw that was authentic," he says.
Now there are those who believe - just as Mr Saeda does - that the Lead Codices are genuine and that they hold important secrets about the ancient world.
But the search for truth in the Holy Land has been littered with fakes and forgeries for hundreds of years and when great claims are made for a new discovery, the burden of proof lies with the finders. And the burden is a heavy one.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Skeleton found in Louisiana bank chimney identified

Skeletal remains found in the chimney of a bank in the US state of Louisiana have been identified as those of a man who has been missing for 27 years.

The bones, which forensics said belonged to Joseph W Schexnider, were discovered by workers in May after the Bank of Abbeville began renovations.
Schexnider, who vanished at the age of 22 in 1984, was wanted by police for the possession of a stolen vehicle.Police speculated the Louisiana native starved to death in the chimney.
Investigators are baffled by the bizarre discovery, but said there was no sign of foul play.
One theory is that Schexnider, whose bones were found with gloves and cigarette lighter, may have been trying to rob the bank, and became stuck in the chimney.
The bank closed off the chimney in the mid to late 1980s.
Tests carried out at a forensics lab at Louisiana State University established the remains were those of Schexnider.
Story comes from:http://ccimls.rapmls.com/scripts/mgrqispi.dll?APPNAME=Capecod&PRGNAME=MLSPropertyDetail

Monday, July 25, 2011

Rising the debt ceiling? Are you fucking kidding me? This is a non-issue. Nobody has kicked up a serious fuss about this EVER. It has been made an issue by dim-witted right wing assholes that don't understand economics. The same people who hate the "liberal elite." Of course, we all know that's code for educated people.
Even if they work this out today, these right wing freaks have already caused pain to an already desperate economy. For example, certain businesses are scrambling to get "plans for default" together. Businesses that are already having ENOUGH problems with the sluggish economy are now having to use precious resources to put stupid plans together. More importantly, the U.S. economy looks weaker in the eyes of the world. All because Teabagging morons want to make sure the economy doesn't recover on Obama's watch.That is really what it boils down to.
These are the same people who tend to say homespun shit like: "I raised 7 kids and just used horse sense and balanced our family's budget." What the hell? I say bring those evil "liberal elite" people out of the woodwork who have evil economic degrees from evil universities like evil Harvard and evil Yale. The news seems to be overlooking them. And let's see what they have to say. We as a country should be ashamed for even entertaining this hayseed economic bullshit for one second. But since it makes for good reality TV, no telling where it will end.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Testicles have such a strange color. This color cannot be pinpointed. For example, it is safe to say the sky is blue, blood is red, grass is green, but testicles? It throws most people for a loop. Of course, there are many different shades of testicles, and even one pair can have many hues. I for one think those who make crayons should consider creating The Testicle Crayon. They should study the palest testicles and the darkest testicles then choose something exactly in the middle.Or maybe the rainbow of testicle hues and shares is too broad for just one crayon. The crayon company should consider making a WHOLE BOX of testicle crayon colors so one would never have to worry about coloring in testicles in any circumstance. Not only would you not have to worry about finding a testicle color, you would have so many testicle color choices, you could give the testicles splendid dimension and realism.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

It is 7,000 degrees outside. I just don't know how the Confederate army is going to stand this heat! I think the uniforms are wool. I really wanted to go to the Battle of Bull Run this weekend, but I believe my blood would get so hot it would stop moving in my veins. I'm rereading Gone With The Wind in the AC to celebrate.

A couple of years ago, I saw an ad for a reenactment in the Northern Virginia area that boasted it would be having "mock amputations." MOCK AMPUTATIONS???? I don't know how they do that exactly, but they got me! They had me at "mock."

150th Anniversary of the First Battle of Bull Run. Festivities started today. Information below if you are in the area, interested and can stand the heat:

This is a newspaper article my mother sent me years ago. Date and newspaper unknown.

Statue of Penguin Recovered in Oak Ridge

Police in Oak Ridge are trying to determine
the owner of a statue of a 7-foot-tall fiberglass penguin.

Patrol officers found the statue in some woods Thursday morning.

The penguin is wearing a blue police-style hat and suit and bears an emblem
for the New York City Police Department on one flipper. The penguin appears
to be holding a radiation detector with one flipper...

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

The Cottingley Fairies appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, two young cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England. In 1917, when the first two photographs were taken, Elsie was 16 years old and Frances was 10. The pictures came to the attention of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who used them to illustrate an article on fairies he had been commissioned to write for the Christmas 1920 edition of The Strand Magazine. Conan Doyle, as a spiritualist, was enthusiastic about the photographs, and interpreted them as clear and visible evidence of psychic phenomena. Public reaction was mixed; some accepted the images as genuine, but others believed they had been faked.Interest in the Cottingley Fairies gradually declined after 1921. Both girls grew up, married and lived abroad for a time. Yet the photographs continued to hold the public imagination; in 1966 a reporter from the Daily Express newspaper traced Elsie, who had by then returned to the UK. Elsie left open the possibility that she believed she had photographed her thoughts, and the media once again became interested in the story. In the early 1980s Elsie and Frances admitted that the photographs were faked using cardboard cutouts of fairies copied from a popular children's book of the time, but Frances continued to claim that the fifth and final photograph was genuine.

Friday, July 15, 2011

I have never been comfortable with the color White. It is the color of wedding dresses, nurses, purity. White is snobbish. I can't relate to it. If you wear it, it gets dirty so fast. But of course this is YOUR fault, NOT White's fault. Nobody blames White for NOT hiding dirt well.

Then of course there is White skin. What fucking problems that has caused!

White in it's purest, cleanest and best form is the white of the sheets hung out to dry between buildings in Eastern Europe. They are so clean they are almost reflective. And if you are standing in the right place below them, you can actually smell the clean tumble down the narrow streets. I imagine these women stirring up some special brew that they only use to wash sheets. Airing these clean sheets seems like a sport. This is the only instance I can think of when white has been attained, deserved. But 99% of the time White believes it is superior to all other colors. It has no personality. It has made up it's mind and it never thinks. White has it SO EASY.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

The Bell Witch or Bell Witch Haunting is a poltergeist legend from Southern United States folklore, involving the Bell family of Adams, Tennessee. The legend is the basis of the films An American Haunting (2006) and The Bell Witch Haunting (2004). It is also said that the Bell Witch may have inspired the film The Blair Witch Project'.

According to the legend, the first reported manifestation of the haunting occurred in 1817 when John William Bell Sr. encountered a strange animal in a cornfield on his large farm in Robertson County, on the Red River, near Adams, Tennessee. The animal, described as having the body of a dog and the head of a rabbit, was shot at by John William Bell Sr. At a later date the Bell family claimed to hear knocking and gnawing noises on the outside walls of their house. These noises eventually moved inside the dwelling. Some time after the noises began Betsy Bell, the family's youngest daughter, claimed to have been assaulted by an invisible force. The legend continues with the poltergeist gaining strength, moving various objects about, speaking and having conversations with the family and guests. It identified itself as "Kate Batts", a neighbor of the Bell's that John had apparently upset in some way.

Bell Sr., later in life, suffered frequent facial seizures, often rendering him speechless (although Bell's Palsy is named after a different Bell). He died on December 20, 1820. A small vial containing a very powerful poison he allegedly ingested was found near his body. When some of the contents were force-fed to the family cat, the animal died. The vial was then disposed of in the fireplace.

Pat Fitzhugh's retelling of the Bell Witch legend concludes with a statement to the effect that some people believe that the spirit returned in 1935, the year when the witch claimed it would return ("one hundred years and seven" past 1828), and took up residence on the former Bell property. Other sources say that 1935 brought nothing out of the ordinary to the Bell descendants or the surrounding community.

The earliest written account is at page 833 in the Goodspeed History of Tennessee, published in 1887 by Goodspeed Publishing. The most famous account is recorded in the 1894 book An Authenticated History of the Bell Witch of Tennessee by Martin Van Buren Ingram. A reprint of this book (most of the copies of the original book with a white cover have disappeared), which has come to be called the "Red Book" is similary hard to find. Also, in the middle 1960s a faithful reproduction of the Ingram book in paperback with a white cover and gold printing was sold by subscription to direct descendants of John Bell, Sr. This book too is almost impossible to find today. The original book by Ingram, as well as all the reprints, cites the earlier (though no known copies exist) Richard William Bell's Diary: "Our Family Trouble". Richard Williams Bell lists several witnesses, including General (later President) Andrew Jackson. However, no mention of the Bell Witch was ever made by Jackson in any of his letters, journals or papers. What is known as the Black Book was written much later and it re-told a lot about the Bell Witch, from Ingram's book. It was published in 1934 by Dr. Charles Bailey Bell, great-grandson of John Bell.

Thirteen Tennessee Ghosts and Jeffrey by Kathryn Tucker Windham includes the story of the Bell Witch.The Guidebook for Tennessee, published by the Works Project Administration in 1939, also contains an account that differs from Ingram's on pages 392–393.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

If you cut off a normal man-sized human head, how long do you think it would have to cook in the oven to be nice and done? I'm guessing it would be 450 degrees for an hour an a half. Anybody have any idea about this? I remember seeing a cooked sheep's head in the movie "Angela's Ashes." Would the timing be similar? How long do you cook a sheep's head? Would a man's head be about the same?

Monday, July 11, 2011

In Romanian mythology, strigoi are the troubled souls of the dead rising from the grave. Some strigoi can be living people with certain magical properties. Some of the properties of the strigoi include: the ability to transform into an animal, invisibility, and the propensity to drain the vitality of victims via blood loss. Strigoi are also known as immortal vampires.
A strigoaică (singular feminine form) is a witch. Strigoi is different than a moroi. They are close relatives of the werewolves known as "pricolici" or "vârcolaci", the latter also meaning "goblin" at times.
These names are derived from strigă, which in Romanian meant "scream" or "barn owl", cognate with Italian strega, which means "witch", and descended from the Latin word strix, for owl. Strigoi viu is a living vampiric witch. Strigoi mort is a dead (undead) vampire. They are most often associated with vampires or zombies.
According to Romanian mythology a strigoi has red hair, blue eyes and two hearts. The strigoi can change into a variety of animals, such as barn owls, bats, rats, cats, wolves, dogs, snakes, toads, lizards, spiders/insects, etc.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

A moroi (sometimes moroii in modern fiction; pl. moroi) is a type of vampire or ghost in Romanian folklore. A female moroi is called a moroaică (pl. moroaice). In some versions, a moroi is a phantom of a dead person which leaves the grave to draw energy from the living.
Moroi are often associated with other figures in Romanian folklore, such as: strigoi (another type of vampire), vârcolac (werewolf), or pricolici (werewolf). Morois are also known as mortal vampires, whereas strigoi are immortal vampires.
They are also sometimes referred to in modern myth as the live-born offspring of two strigoi. It may signify an infant who died before being baptized. The origins of the term 'moroi' are unclear, but it is thought by the Romanian Academy to have possibly originated from the Old Slavonic word mora ("nightmare"). It also resembles the word mort (dead).

Saturday, July 9, 2011

The phrase, "sweet tooth" means to have a love of sweets. I always thought this was strange. Does that mean you have a tooth that needs to be filled with sweet shit? If the tooth doesn't get what it needs, does it hurt? Will it take over? Or is the "sweet tooth" very good at chewing sweet stuff in particular?

Friday, July 8, 2011

I have to pause and wonder again why everyone is so worked up about this woman. I seriously thought they were going to lynch her when the verdict came down. When she is released next week, I wonder if she will be killed by a mob.

Something horrible happened because someone is dead, and this woman seems...well...at best she knows something. I think something slimy went on for sure. But this happens all the time. Why is the country so worked over this?

Does is have something to do with the economy? Is it that people feel powerless right now and Casey Anthony comes "just does what she wants" and gets away with it?

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Margaret Higgins Sanger Slee (September 14, 1879 – September 6, 1966) was an American sex educator, nurse, birth control activist and the founder of the American Birth Control League.

In 1915 Sanger visited a Dutch birth control clinic at which she became convinced that a diaphragm was actually a more effective means of contraception than the suppositories and douches that she had been distributing back in the United States. This realization began the slow introduction of the diaphragm to the United States with Sanger later illegally smuggling them into the country.
In 1916, Sanger published What Every Girl Should Know, which was later widely distributed as one of the E. Haldeman-Julius "Little Blue Books". It provided information about such topics as menstruation and sexuality in adolescents. It was followed in 1917 by What Every Mother Should Know. She also launched the monthly periodical The Birth Control Review and Birth Control News and contributed articles on health to the Socialist Party paper, The Call.
On October 16, 1916, Sanger opened a family planning and birth control clinic at 46 Amboy St. in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, the first of its kind in the United States. It was raided 9 days later by the police. She served 30 days in prison. An initial appeal was rejected but in 1918 an opinion written by Judge Frederick E. Crane of the New York Court of Appeals allowed doctors to prescribe contraception.
Sanger founded the American Birth Control League (ABCL) in 1921. In 1922 she traveled to Japan to work with Japanese feminist Kato Shidzue promoting birth control; over the next several years, she would return another six times for this purpose. In this year she married her second husband, oil tycoon James Noah H. Slee.
In 1923 under the auspices of the ABCL, she established the Clinical Research Bureau (CRB). Sanger eventually found a loophole in the system when she had learned that physicians were exempt from the law that prohibited the distribution of contraceptive information to women when prescribed for medical reasons.With the help of her wealthy supporters, Sanger was finally able to open the first legal birth control clinic that was staffed entirely by female doctors and social workers. It was the first legal birth control clinic in the U.S. (renamed Margaret Sanger Research Bureau in 1940). It received crucial grants from John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s Bureau of Social Hygiene from 1924 onward. The grants were made anonymously to avoid public exposure of the Rockefeller name to her agenda. The family also consistently supported her ongoing efforts in regard to population control.
Also in 1923 she formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control and served as its president until its dissolution in 1937 after birth control, under medical supervision, was legalized in many states. In 1927 Sanger helped organize the first World Population Conference in Geneva.
Between 1921 and 1926 Sanger received over a million letters from mothers requesting information on birth control. From 1916 on she lectured "in many places—halls, churches, women's clubs, homes, theaters" to "many types of audiences—cotton workers, churchmen, liberals, socialists, scientists, clubmen, and fashionable, philanthropically minded women."
In 1926 Sanger gave a lecture on birth control to the women's auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan in Silver Lake, New Jersey. She described it as "one of the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing," and added that she had to use only "the most elementary terms, as though I were trying to make children understand." Sanger's talk was well-received by the group and as a result "a dozen invitations to similar groups were proffered."

In 1937 Sanger became chairperson of the Birth Control Council of America and launched two publications, The Birth Control Review and The Birth Control News. From 1939 to 1942 she was an honorary delegate of the Birth Control Federation of America, which included a supervisory role with the Negro Project, alongside Mary Lasker and Clarence Gamble. From 1952 to 1959 she served as president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation; at the time it was the largest private international "family planning" organization.
In the early 1960s Sanger promoted the use of the newly-available birth control pill. She toured Europe, Africa and Asia lecturing and helping to establish clinics.
Sanger died in 1966 in Tucson, Arizona, 8 days shy of her 87th birthday and a little over a year after the Griswold v. Connecticut decision, which legalized birth control for married couples in the U.S., the apex of her 50-year agenda.
Sanger's books include Woman and the New Race (1920), The Pivot of Civilization (1922), Happiness in Marriage (1926), My Fight For Birth Control (1931) and an autobiography (1938).
The book, Motherhood in Bondage, is a large compilation of actual letters that were written to Margaret Sanger in desperation by thousands of women who were begging to be given information on how they could prevent unwanted pregnancies for a vast number of different reasons.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Just as the jury started to deliberate the case, tourists started popping up where two year old Caylee Anthony's body was found. They left flowers, flags, stuffed animals and took photos of themselves at the crime scene.

There is nothing new about this. We Americans have a long history of this sort of fascination with murder. When the bodies of Bonnie and Clyde were wheeled through town, people dipped handkerchiefs into their blood for souvenirs.

What I have never seen in a murder case like this is the anger. EVERYWHERE I go, the bank, grocery store, gas station, women are talking about this. It is always WOMEN talking about it, and they are not just talking about it; there is a strange desperate aggravated tone in their voice. Two women were going on about it in the bank so loudly, it sounded like they were going to come to blows even though they were saying the same thing.

I have a theory (I have to preface this by saying that I don't have any children). I believe this Casey Anthony thing has touched a REALLY sensitive nerve that "good mothers" would never say out loud: they have thought of being free from their children (not that they have thought about murdering their children to get free, but just somehow being free). I told this theory to a friend of mine who does have children and she agreed. Raising kids is hard work and what woman HASN'T fantasized about being free from this enormous responsibility from time to time. I don't think some women even realize that these thoughts drift through their heads because these thoughts are so outlandish, so hateful, so selfish, but Casey Anthony has made all this guilt shoot to the surface.

The tone of these women reminds me of the "very straight men" who go on and on about hating gay men. There is a self-hating gay part of these men that they have to flog publicly to PROVE they are NOT gay. Otherwise, whey are they so obsessed?

So in order to PROVE they ARE good mothers that have NEVER dreamed about being free from the responsibility of children, they have to protest "that slut" Casey Anthony as loudly as they can.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

If I run fast enough
when I die
I can become a kite—
an armless ghost with renewed wit.
I will finally appreciate
the rareness of this divided earth
because I will have no throat.
I'll fly over Christmas Eve
packed with Catholics doing pirouettes for Mary.
I'll fly over the geometry of Greece
dotted with temples and ancient nudity.
I'll fly over a sky burial in Tibet
crowded with buzzards
filled to the brim with human femurs and eyeballs.
I'll fly past news satellites
and the moon with its American flag and golf balls.
I'll make faces at the camera on Mars.
But I won't get trapped in any orbit—
I'll keep moving forward
because the fun of being dead
is in the flying.

Friday, July 1, 2011

How could a woman's body be in a pool for two days and nobody notice? People were swimming in the pool with the corpse.

Fall River, MA is the hometown of Lizzie Bordan.

FALL RIVER, Mass. --

The body of a woman who drowned was apparently in a Fall River public pool for two days and remained there while people were swimming in the pool before it was discovered, police said Wednesday.

Authorities identified the woman as Marie Joseph, 36, of Fall River.

According to police, Joseph's body had been in Veteran's Memorial Pool at Lafayette Park since Sunday. Investigators said the body was found by people who were at the pool after it closed at 10 p.m. Tuesday.

The pool is operated by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation.

Lifeguards were on duty throughout the day on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, yet police said no one saw the body.

Friends of Joseph told NBC 10 they're angry that her death somehow went unnoticed.

"People were swimming there with a body in there. They didn't find the body until (Tuesday night)," one woman said.
"She can't swim. She told me this like two weeks ago. She can't swim. She said, 'You've got to teach me how to swim, because I can't swim,'" another friend said.

Joseph's friends told NBC 10 they went to the park with her at around 2 p.m. on Sunday, but left without her.

Joseph was watching a neighbor's 9-year-old boy as he went down a waterslide at the pool. Police said she somehow fell down the slide herself, went underwater, and drowned.

"The boy stated that once he was in the water after coming down the slide, Marie unexpectedly slid down the slide landing on top of him. He further stated that she went under the water and did not surface," said ChiefDaniel Racine of the Fall River Police Department.

Joseph's friends told NBC 10 that the boy, who was with Joseph, went to a lifeguard for help, but was ignored.

Investigators wouldn't corroborate the boy's story, but said they are talking to everyone involved in the drowning.

"There are interviews going on right now. Exactly who that boy spoke to, and what that person did, and what happened next," said Bristol County District AttorneySam Sutter.

The DCR released a statement on Wednesday.

"On behalf of the Department of Conservation and Recreation, we express our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Marie Joseph," according to a statement from CommissionerEd Lambert.

"By 5:30 p.m. (Wednesday) all 30 of DCR's deepwater pools will be closed while we conduct a full review of each facility’s safety and operational procedures over the next 24 to 48 hours. As of this hour, the entire staff of the Veteran's Memorial Swimming Pool in Fall River has been placed on administrative leave.

"We will continue to cooperate fully with local and state law enforcement during their ongoing investigation."

About Me

I'm a writer just trying to write. I believe that all great poetry is the result of the game of juxtaposition filtered through the black river of truth that runs between everyone's eyes and legs. My first book of poetry is Appalachian Flood which was released in 2009. I'm working on my new book of poems, The Gods of Greenery, which should be finished soon.